On May 15, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States was removing Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and would soon resume normal diplomatic relations with the one-time pariah. Rice said the move was in response to "historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs." Yet the resumption of diplomatic ties remains unsettling to some Americans. Though Libya has made a concerted effort to enter the good graces of the international community, leader Muammar el-Qaddafi has amassed a bad human-rights record since he took power in 1969.

In the early 1970s, Qaddafi established terrorist training camps on Libyan soil, provided terrorist groups with arms, and offered safe haven to terrorists, say U.S. officials. Among the groups aided by Qaddafi were the Irish Republican Army, Spain's ETA, Italy's Red Brigades, and Palestinian groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization. Libya was also suspected of attempting to assassinate the leaders of Chad, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo).

5η Παράγραφος

One group that Libya never supported was al-Qaeda. As Libya expert Lisa Anderson told CFR.org's Bernard Gwertzman, al-Qaeda regards Qaddafi as "no better than the Saudi government, no better than any of these other governments that they hate." In fact, Qaddafi issued the first Interpol warrant for Osama bin Laden in 1998 for the killings of two German counterterrorism agents in Tripoli four years earlier.

8η , 9η Παράγραφος

At the same time, Qaddafi increasingly moved to cut Libya's ties to terrorism. Starting in 1999, Qaddafi expelled the Abu Nidal Organization, closed Libya's terrorist training camps, cut ties to Palestinian militants, and extradited suspected terrorists to Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan. In the 2002 edition of the state sponsors of terrorism list, the State Department said Qaddafi had "repeatedly denounced terrorism."

In August 2003, after protracted negotiations with UN, U.S., and UK representatives, Libya finally agreed to pay some $2.7 million in compensation to the victims of the Pan Am 103 bombing. Days later, Libya delivered a letter to the UN Security Council accepting responsibility for the attack.

Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's decades-long confrontation with the West has never given him much purchase among militant Islamists in Libya. In fact, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG – Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah fi-Libya) has waged a violent insurgency for ten years – with a hostility toward the eccentric dictator so implacable that it refuses even to negotiate with his envoys. Ironically, this internal challenge has led Qadhafi to abandon his quixotic defiance of the United States and join the Bush administration's war on terror, while the prospect of a LIFG takeover in Libya has facilitated American and European forgiveness of past transgressions.

3η Παράγραφος

So long as oil revenues remained plentiful, however, clerical angst did not inspire broad-based challenges to Qadhafi's rule. With the decline of oil prices in the 1980s, however, educated Libyans began to deeply resent the regime's heterodox religious orientation, conspicuous corruption and economic mismanagement. Adding fuel to the fire, Saudi Arabia stepped up its support for radical Wahhabi militants in the 1980s, nine of whom (including three army officers), were executed by the regime in 1987. As in other Arab states, government repression at home led many militant Libyan Islamists (estimated to be at least 500) to join the mujahideen fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Some returned to Libya in the early 1990s; others traveled to the Sudan, where Osama bin Laden had begun building what would become the al-Qaeda terrorist network, or took up residence in Britain.

7η Παράγραφος

Qadhafi demanded that the Sudanese government expel Libyan operatives from his camps and began ejecting thousands of Sudanese workers from the country. Under pressure from his hosts, bin Laden reluctantly informed his Libyan compatriots that they had to leave and gave them $2,400 each and plane tickets out of the country for their families. "Most of them, they refused the offer…they were very upset and angry," a Moroccan member of al-Qaeda later recalled.

13η , 14ηΠαράγραφος

Following 9/11, Qadhafi jumped at the opportunity to collaborate in the Bush administration's war on radical Islamist terrorism. Just weeks after the attacks, a CIA team flew to London to meet face to face with the man believed to have planned the 1988 Lockerbie bombing – Musa Kusa, the head of Libyan intelligence. Kusa provided the CIA (and also Britain's M16 foreign intelligence service) with the names of LIFG operatives and other Libyan Islamists who trained in Afghanistan, as well as dossiers on LIFG leaders living in the UK. In light of the central role of Libyan Afghans in al-Qaeda, this was a major intelligence windfall for the Bush administration.

The American government, for its part, officially designated LIFG as a terrorist organization. Although LIFG does not have a presence in the United States, the Bush administration's designation is not merely symbolic. For starters, it means that any state providing assistance to LIFG can potentially be designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department. More importantly, it means that any member of LIFG living in undemocratic countries backed by the United States (e.g. Pakistan, Egypt) runs the risk of arrest and "rendition" back to Libya.

British intelligence and security service interest in Libya has focused for 20 years on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), whether it was opposing Muammar Gaddafi and working with al-Qaida, later renouncing its old jihadi worldview – or taking part in the armed uprising that has now overthrown the regime.

Founded in 1990 in eastern Libya and accused of attempting to kill Gaddafi three times – according to unconfirmed claims with help from MI6 – the LIFG was effectively defeated on its home turf by 1998. Its cadres fled first to Sudan and Afghanistan and Iraq where hundreds joined al-Qaida. It was officially disbanded in 2010.

According to Noman Benotman, a former LIFG commander who fought with Osama bin Laden, at its peak the group had 1,000 active members, training camps in Afghanistan and a network of supporters and fundraisers in Libya, the Middle East and Europe. Benotman now works as an analyst for the Quilliam Foundation, a UK government-funded counter-radicalisation thinktank in London.

Other top ex-LIFG figures remain in al-Qaida. Its chief of operations, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan, was killed two weeks ago in a CIA drone strike. His likely successor, Abu Yahya al-Libi, is also Libyan.

Tony Blair wrote to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to thank him for the “excellent cooperation” between the two countries’ counter-terrorism agencies following a period during which the UK and Libya worked together to arrange for Libyan dissidents to be kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their families.

The letter, written in 2007, followed a period in which the dictator’s intelligence officers were permitted to operate in the UK, approaching and intimidating Libyan refugees in an attempt to persuade them to work as informants for both countries’ agencies.

Addressed “Dear Mu’ammar” and signed “Best wishes yours ever, Tony”, the letter was among hundreds of pages of documents recovered from Libyan government offices following the 2011 revolution and pieced together by a team of London lawyers.

The lawyers are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents who were targeted by the two countries’ agencies during the covert cooperation. The claimants were variously detained and allegedly mistreated in Saudi Arabia, rendered from Mali to Libya, or detained and subjected to control orders in the UK.

10η Παράγραφος

Blair’s letter from Downing Street was written on 26 April 2007, to inform Gaddafi that the UK was about to fail in its attempts to deport two Libyans allegedly linked to an Islamist opposition organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The following day the court of appeal handed down ajudgment in which it said LIFG associates could not be deported to Libya as they could be tortured, regardless of any assurances offered by Gaddafi. Lawyers representing the two men did not know at that time that the intelligence assessments of their clients were based in part on information extracted from victims of the UK-Libyan rendition operations.

17η, 18ηΠαράγραφος

Blair’s letter was written following several years of rapprochement between the UK and Libya, a process that gathered pace after the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11.

The UK can point to a number of achievements that arose from the relationship, including Gaddafi’s decision in 2003 to abandon his attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Libya is the shining success story of negotiated disarmament — one of the very few. On Dec. 19, 2003, following nine months of secret talks with the United States and Britain, Moammar Kadafi agreed to give up his entire arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The component parts were to be either destroyed or shipped abroad.

Only a few months later, American officials were able to display at Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear equipment taken from Libya. Tons of chemical weapons and weapons precursors were destroyed. Kadafi even turned over to the U.S. for "safekeeping" five Scud-C missiles as part of his pledge to get rid of any missiles with a range longer than 300 kilometers. Earlier, Kadafi had renounced terrorism and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

However the organisation has a troubled history being under pressure from Muammar Gaddafi and shortly after the 9–11 attacks, LIFG was banned worldwide (as an affiliate of al-Qaeda) by the UN 1267 Committee.[4][6] Listed at the Foreign Terrorist Organizations,[7] the group has denied ever being affiliated with al-Qaeda, stating that it refused to join the global Islamic front Osama bin Laden declared against the west in 1998

France and the United Kingdom have led the charge on the intervention in Libya. For a month, both pushed the international community toward an intervention, ultimately penning U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 authorizing the no-fly zone on March 17.

Paris’ and London’s interests in waging war on Libya are not the same, and Libya carries different weight with each. For the United Kingdom, Libya offers a promise of energy exploitation. It is not a country with whichLondon has a strong client-patron relationship at the moment, but one could develop if Moammar Gadhafi were removed from power. For France, Tripoli already is a significant energy exporter and arms customer. Paris’ interest in intervening is also about intra-European politics. Paris has been the most vociferous supporter of theLibya intervention. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it his mission to gather an international coalition to wage war on Libya, and France has been at the vanguard of recognizing the legitimacy of the Benghazi-based rebels.

6ηΠαράγραφος

The domestic political story is fairly straightforward. At the onset of the unrest in the Middle East, Paris stalled on recognizing the protesters as legitimate. In fact, then-French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie offered the Tunisian government official help in dealing with the protesters. Three days later, longtime Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country

10ηΠαράγραφος

The intervention in Libya therefore is a way to reassert to Europe, but particularly to Germany, that France still leads the Continent on foreign and military affairs. It is a message that says if Europe intends to be taken seriously as a global power, it will need French military power. France’s close coordination with the United Kingdom also is an attempt to further develop the military alliance between London and Paris formalized on Nov. 2, 2010, as a counter to Germany’s overwhelming economic and political power in the European Union.

12ηΠαράγραφος

As for interests in Libya, France has plenty, but its situation could be improved. French energy major Total SA is involved in Libya but not to the same extent as Italian ENI or even German Wintershall. Considering Libya’s plentiful and largely unexplored energy reserves, French energy companies could stand to profit from helping rebels take power in Tripoli. But it is really military sales that Paris has benefited from thus far. Between 2004 — when the European Union lifted its arms embargo against Libya — and 2011, Tripoli has purchased approximately half a billion dollars worth of arms from France, more than from any other country in Europe. However, the Italian government was in negotiation for more than a billion dollars worth of more deals in 2010, and it seemed that the Rome-Tripoli relationship was overtaking Paris’ efforts in Libya prior to the intervention.

16ηΠαράγραφος

London has another significant interest, namely, energy. British energy major BP has no production in Libya, although it agreed with Tripoli to drill onshore and offshore wells under a $1 billion deal signed in 2007. The negotiations on these concessions were drawn out but were finalized after the Scottish government decided to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds in August 2009. He was expected to die of prostate cancer within months of his release but presumably is still alive in Tripoli. The Labour government in power at the time came under heavy criticism for al-Megrahi’s release. British media speculated, not entirely unfairly, that the decision represented an effort to kick-start BP’s production in Libya and smooth relations between London and Tripoli. BP announced in 2009 that it planned to invest $20 billion in Libyan oil production over the next 20 years.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday he was against NATO intervention in Libya but had to go along with it, an admission that exposed the fragility of the alliance trying to unseat Muammar Gaddafi.

16η Παράγραφος

Potentially adding to the pressure on Italy to review its stance on Libya, a senior Libyan government spokesman said negotiations had begun with Russian and Chinese firms to take over the role of Italian energy firm ENI in oil and gas projects.

The move by the country's two largest foreign oil and gas investors, which comes after France's Total SA also pulled out its foreign staff, comes as capital's worst fighting in six months threatens Libya's fragile oil recovery.

It would be absurd, unthinkable, he said. It should not even be discussed. Two weeks later he repeated that view. Nato intervention would be useless, he said, and would have dangerous consequences.

But this week, Turkish policy towards Libya appears to have done a complete U-turn. Criticising the French government for taking the lead role in air attacks on Col Gaddafi's forces, Turkey has insisted that command of the operation be handed over to Nato, and Nato alone. For this to happen, the agreement of Turkey - a Nato member since 1952 - is essential.

12η Παράγραφος

So when the Arab uprisings began, Mr Erdogan was presented with a dilemma.

His political success in Turkey is partly due to his finely-tuned populist instincts. As a politician who has loudly stood up to Israel, he is something of a hero both among his largely Islamic constituency at home and among Arab populations elsewhere. So he wanted to do the popular thing by supporting the uprisings. But doing so put the profitable relationships his government had nurtured with the governments confronted by these uprisings at risk.

20η, 21η Παράγραφος

It was also spurred on by seeing France take the lead. Relations between France and Turkey are badly strained over French objections to eventual Turkish membership of the European Union. There was outrage in Turkey over President Sarkozy's first official visit last month, when he stayed only six hours. There was further outrage when Turkey was not invited to the summit meeting on Libya that Mr Sarkozy convened after the UN vote.

French air attacks on Libyan ground forces were denounced by the Turkish Foreign Minister as going beyond what the UN had authorised. So when France objected to Nato taking command, Turkey instinctively pushed the other way.

Libya's internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni said his government would stop dealing with Turkey because it was sending weapons to a rival group in Tripoli so that "the Libyan people kill each other".

Two administrations, one in the capital and Thinni's in the east, have been battling for power since the armed group Libya Dawn seized Tripoli in July and reinstated lawmakers from a previous assembly, four years after Muammar Gaddafi was ousted.

10ηΠαράγραφος

In the CBC interview, Thinni said Turkish firms would be excluded from contracts in territory controlled by his government, adding that any outstanding bills would be paid.

13ηΠαράγραφος

Thinni also accused Qatar of giving "material" support to the rival side in the Libyan conflict. He did not elaborate.

17ηΠαράγραφος

The Brotherhood has a presence in the rival parliament in Tripoli and western Libya.

Libya's internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni said his government would stop dealing with Turkey because it was sending weapons to a rival group in Tripoli so that "the Libyan people kill each other".

Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni said on Sunday Qatar had sent three military planes loaded with weapons to a Tripoli airport controlled by an armed opposition group, accusing a second country of interfering in the lawless oil producer.

The government had already accused Sudan of having tried to arm an Islamist-leaning group which seized Tripoli last month, forcing senior officials and the elected parliament to relocate to the east, part of a growing state of anarchy.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist accused of selling nuclear secrets, was today freed from five years of house arrest by a court and immediately declared that he can now "lead a normal life".

Khan, lionised as the "father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb, confessed in 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He was immediately pardoned but detained in his home.

5η, 6η , 7ηΠαράγραφος

Khan was detained in early 2004 after making a televised confession to nuclear proliferation, following intense international pressure on Pakistan. His nuclear trading network had been discovered by western intelligence agents.

A national hero in Pakistan for spearheading the country's nuclear weapons programme, Khan subsequently retracted his confession.

He said that, aside from having to maintain guards around him, he had been freed with the "blessing" of the government, which had been "very helpful".

11η Παράγραφος

Pakistan has prevented foreign investigators from questioning Khan, insisting it has passed on all relevant information about nuclear proliferation. That bar is likely to remain.

The cache of nuclear technology that Libya turned over to the United States, Britain and international nuclear inspectors in early 2004 was large — far larger than American intelligence experts had expected. There were more than 4,000 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium. There were blueprints for how to build a nuclear bomb — missing some critical components but good enough to get the work started.

The whole package of goods came from a deal the Qaddafis struck with Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the architects of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, who built the world’s largest black-market network in nuclear technology. The $100 million to $200 million that the Central Intelligence Agency later estimated that Libya spent on the nuclear project has never been recovered. For their part, the Libyans could never get the system working; many of the large centrifuges were still in their wooden packing crates when they were turned over.

The Libyan Civil War, which began after Qaddaffi’s fall, is often describedas a proxy war, with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates reportedly backing al-Thinni and the officially recognized government in Tobruk, and Qatar and Turkey reportedly backing the Islamists and other opposition factions. Turkey has made no secret about backing the country’s Islamists after Qaddaffi’s fall in 2011, and it openlyliaises with the self-declared Islamist government in Tripoli. Yet Turkey’s Libyan envoy complains that these latest allegations are a “dangerous smear campaign.”

Saudi Arabia has concluded that a Libyan plot to assassinate the kingdom's de facto ruler in late 2003 was cloaked to look like an al Qaeda-inspired domestic revolt and was broken up only days before it was to have been carried out, according to Saudi officials and documents that detail the investigation.

Relations between the two states have a history of tension ever since Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overthrew the Libyan monarchy in 1969 and declared himself a revolutionary leader committed to fighting conservative Arab regimes - with Saudi Arabia at the top of the list - says the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi.

Ties improved during the 1980s but nosedived again during the run-up to the Iraq war, he says.

Then, in a summit spat broadcast live on Arab satellite television, Colonel Gaddafi publicly accused the Saudis of betraying their Arab brethren and of being subservient to the Americans. Crown Prince Abdullah reacted angrily, calling him a liar.

The longest underwater pipeline in the Mediterranean runs from the coast of Libya to the Italian island of Sicily. Inaugurated in 2004 by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the 323 miles (520 km) pipeline and its northward flow of gas might as well be a symbol of the relationship between the two countries.

Of all the mutual back-scratching among Europe's rich democracies and North Africa's strongmen, Italy's dependency on Gaddafi stands apart. Libya is Italy's largest supplier of oil, providing for roughly a third of the country's energy consumption. The dictator's government owns a substantial share of the Milan stock market, including 7.5% of Unicredit, Italy's largest bank; 2% of the Italian oil company ENI; 2% of the country's second largest industrial group, Finmeccanica; and 7% of the Turin-based Juventus soccer club. Libya also provides a critical market for its northern neighbor's struggling construction firms. And, since 2008, when Italy agreed to invest $5 billion in Libya, Gaddafi has kept a tight grip on the attempts by his citizens and other African migrants to take ships northward on the Mediterranean.

4η Παράγραφος

The two countries — which are geographically close and connected by a history of colonialism, with complementary economies — have long had tight ties. But under Berlusconi, the relationship reached new levels of chumminess. Whenever Gaddafi visited Italy, he was paraded as a guest of honor. In 2009 he was given a seat at the table during the G-8 summit in Italy. At one point, Berlusconi was even filmed kissing the dictator's hand.

6η Παράγραφος

Today the Italian approach seems to have backfired. Libya risks sliding into civil war and anarchy. Hundreds of Libyans have lost their lives. Italian citizens are being evacuated. Europe is bracing itself for a new round of immigration. And investors have been racing to sell off shares of companies like ENI, which are strongly invested in Gaddafi's Libya.